On May 19, 2006, at 3:10 AM, Peter Mackay wrote:
Having an up-to-date comprehensive encyclopedia using volunteer labor is a very big task :)
No argument there, and Wikipedia is a stunning achievement by anybody's standards. However I was thinking that the sort of people who are capable of ensuring that legal articles are accurate, uptodate and dependent are usually busy and highly paid. Asking senior lawyers to work on a legalopedia in their time off is a step up from asking Star Trek fans to compile lists of trivia.
Yeah, and the same for asking knowledgeable computer scientists, mathemeticans, or philosophers to contribute. Then again, many lawyers work pro bono giving actual legal advice and representation— certainly editing Wikipedia is easier than this.
Compiling useful legal articles and then keeping them up to date isn't something your average editor can do. How do we check credentials, for example?
Non-lawyers can still cite lawyers, if lawyers write and publish these sorts of resources (law school textbooks perhaps?).